Michael Hickins

Walldorf, Germany-based enterprise software vendor SAP  stuck close to its supply-chain roots today and announced a series of products to help companies track and authenticate their products. The company introduced a product tracking and authentication (PTA) application and object event repository (OER) that companies can use to aggregate data from RFID or other electronic tagging […]

Microsoft has tried it all in its seemingly endless heavyweight bout with the European boxing — I mean Competition — Commission. In the latest round, the European watchdog jabbed at Microsoft for gouging competitors with royalty rates on interoperability protocols, which the commission judges too high. Microsoft responded by leaning into the ropes and announcing […]

UPDATED: Microsoft  today confirmed speculation that it intends to buy voice recognition application vendor Tellme Networks. Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft’s business division, refused to disclose the terms of the agreement, but said he expects the deal to close during the second quarter of 2007. Privately held Tellme provides voice-recognition applications and service platforms used […]

Microsoft  is today one step closer to seeing its Office Open XML (OOXML) format anointed as a standard. The International Standards Organization (ISO) told internetnews.com that it will submit the format for fast-track approval to the standards bodies of member countries “in the near future.” Microsoft is thus one step closer to seeing the file […]

UPDATED: Microsoft’s  definition of on-demand software is different from the conventional thinking. Rather than software-as-a-service (SaaS), Microsoft executives like to talk about software plus services. The company plans to add more online services to help companies connect with their partners and customers, Satya Nadella, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s business division, said yesterday at Microsoft’s […]

Having proffered carrots, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) has come out swinging sticks today. The BSA has gone after five software pirates in Europe and the United States that the group says were illegally selling software online. One was operating in the United Kingdom, one in Austria, two in Germany and one in Pennsylvania. In […]

Business intelligence relies on clean data and a single version of the truth. On-demand sales compensation management software vendor Xactly believes that kind of valuable information can be extrapolated from sales data. The company has thus turned to new partners, including business intelligence software vendor Cognos  and enterprise data integration specialist Informatica , to roll […]

Salesforce.com  partners had to scramble their customer service crews in a hurry this week because of an unexpected shutdown of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendor’s platform, internetnews.com has learned. Salesforce.com, the leading vendor of on-demand customer relationship management, seemed to have put doubts about the SaaS delivery model to rest with a fairly flawless performance following […]

Opinion: There they go again. The corporate apologists demanding the repeal or evisceration of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 have become a chorus. Just last month, Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Christopher Cox repeated his intention of reforming (or defanging) SOX. And then it will only be a matter of time before crooked books get […]

In the crosshairs of the European Commission for failing to play nice with others, Microsoft  announced today that is has signed its first licensee for protocol technology under the Work Group Server Protocol Program (WSPP), the European licensing program. The deal means that Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based Quest Software  will have access to Microsoft’s protocol technology […]

NEW YORK — Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe , said that the Web development software company will sign a deal with a major U.S. wireless carrier to allow customers to view video on their handsets. “One of either Verizon  or Cingular  will launch a service by the end of the year that will make video […]

Microsoft  said it will launch a public beta of Office Communications Server 2007 and its client, Microsoft Office Communicator later this month. The new application stack is the Redmond, Wash.-based software vendor’s response to IBM’s  unified communications strategy. Both efforts are an attempt to centralize voice and data communications through a single client on the […]